


A Beautiful(ly Gay) Thing

by NoisyNoiverns



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Developing Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 19:05:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8679844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoisyNoiverns/pseuds/NoisyNoiverns
Summary: Back before Han'Gerrel was Admiral of the Heavy Fleet, he was a marine. An admittedly easily-distracted marine with impulse control issues.





	

**Author's Note:**

> how gerrel and my oc for his husband met, written on request from my wonderful datemate <3

Ground missions, if you asked Han’Gerrel, were only enjoyable on the occasions when the marines actually got to shoot something. Unfortunately, “actually getting to shoot things” only made up a small portion of what marines usually did on missions. Most of the time, they were just doing salvage, or providing an unnecessary escort for scientists on planets where the only real danger was unfriendly local fauna.

This, thankfully, was not one of those times.

The Fleet had been wandering through a mostly uninhabited system when a research base on the single planet that could possibly be considered vaguely hospitable had flagged them down, asking if they could spare a squad or two to take out a couple dozen Eclipse mercs who had been pestering them for the past few weeks. Never ones to turn down a bit of action, the marines had eagerly volunteered, and so Gerrel found himself on a shuttle down to some planet whose name was just a whole lot of numbers on a salarian map.

Since they didn’t exactly have a lot of room to spare, he was sandwiched between his usual partner, a prickly yet tolerably amicable stickler for the rules by the name of Kalon’Hazir vas _Neema_ , and a skinny new kid whose sniper rifle kept jabbing him in the side.

Okay, most of them were new kids on this particular shuttle, but the sniper was of a more recent batch of recruits than Gerrel and Hazir’s, and Gerrel was pretty sure he was madly in love with the stupid gun by the way he was fawning over it.

“Hey, watch that damn thing!” he barked, as the butt of the gun poked his kidneys for the hundredth time.

The sniper jumped and almost dropped his gun. “Sorry,” he all but squeaked, clutching it to his chest.

Hazir grunted. “Don’t fight, Han,” he grumbled, scooting over so Gerrel could put more room between him and the sniper. “Not in the air, anyway.”

He scowled. “Easy for _you_ to say…” He muted his speakers and hunched his shoulders, muttering to himself, “Stupid sexy-voiced sniper…”

Wait.

Okay, yeah, the sniper definitely had an appealing voice, all soft tones and lilting vowels, with a slight clip to some of the sounds. Not an accent Gerrel was familiar with, having grown up almost entirely on the _Tonbay_ , but he’d heard a small handful of people using it around the Neema, so it was probably Heavy Fleet. And his voice was somewhat higher-pitched than both Hazir’s and Gerrel’s own, more of a tenor than a baritone.

Fuck, yeah, okay, his voice was kind of sexy.

But dammit, he was _not_ going to focus in on a guy who couldn’t keep his stupid gun to himself.

 _That was probably innuendo_ , his traitor brain informed him.

 _Shut up_ , he told it.

It did not shut up.

 _Wonder what he’s like in bed_ , the totally useless part of his brain mused as the squad disembarked from the shuttles.

 _Is he even gay?_ it asked as they radioed in to the research team to let them know they were on their way.

 _Keelah, I hope he’s gay_ , was the last full thought it managed to get in before they engaged the mercs. _Ancestors, I want him to-_

The howl of his assault rifle mercifully cut the thought process short, drowning out all gay thoughts until the first syllable of _assault_ crept in while he was waiting for the heat sink to cool off. Then he had to take a moment to scream in dismay at himself and bang his head against the boulder he was using for cover, hard enough to make his brain feel like it was a rubber bouncy ball inside his skull.

The recruit next to him very quickly found new cover. He didn’t blame her.

Small blessings, there weren’t very many of the damn mercs. Before too long, he managed to banish all thoughts of the sniper with the nice voice, falling into the familiar rhythm of aim, shoot, repeat. The kick of the rifle in his hands, the bark of the slugs leaving the barrel, the faint gun smoke filtering through his helmet’s olfactory input- it was something he could understand, something he knew like the back of his hand. It still made his gut churn when guts and blood exploded on the other end of his scope, but he’d been assured that would fade with time.

The cries of battle were fading quickly. The marines the Fleet had sent were more than enough to dispose of the mercs, with another one falling every few moments. It was sort of disappointing, really- they got so few opportunities to really _do_ anything. Gerrel suppressed a sigh as he lined up another shot. This one was too easy. The merc in question was focused on somebody else, so Gerrel had all the time in the world to neatly align his shot with the asari’s gut, brace himself so the kickback would pull the next several shots up towards her head, and…

… watch as her head exploded into a gory mess of bone and brain and blood before he could pull the trigger.

He cursed and wrenched his head away from the scope, looking around wildly for who’d stolen his shot. A ways back, perched high on a pile of boulders, somebody was prepping a sniper rifle for another fire, and his gut sank as he recognized none other than the infiltrator from before. That just _figured_.

He waited until he heard a pause in combat, then collapsed his assault rifle, squared his shoulders, and stormed up to the boulder pile. _“Hey!”_ he bellowed, putting all his lung capacity into it.

Maybe that was too _much_ lung capacity. The infiltrator yelped and fumbled his rifle, almost dropping it before catching it and clutching it to his chest. Once the gun was recovered, the infiltrator looked at him with wide, terrified eyes.

Gerrel puffed out his chest and bristled. “You stole my shot!”

The sniper cringed. “I- I- um- I’m sorry, I, I, uh…”

Gerrel folded his arms and scowled. This probably wasn’t a good time, but then, his mother had always scolded him for being impulsive, and then Rael had taken up the mantle on Pilgrimage. “Well?”

Sniper shrank back just as the squad comm crackled in Gerrel’s ear. “Leave him alone, Han, _keelah_.”

Gerrel turned to see Hazir lazily wandering up. “Hazir, mate, I had the shot _perfect_ ,” he croaked, gesturing helplessly with his hands.

“So you bully. Of course, how silly of me.” Gerrel could hear Hazir’s eyes rolling at him as he turned towards the hapless sniper. “Sorry about him, he’s all the aggression of a varren with the brain of a pyjak piloting it.”

“Hey!”

The sniper just swallowed and stammered some more, but was cut off by the order to return to the shuttles coming over comms. Apparently the last of the mercs had been picked off while Gerrel was going after the infiltrator. Figured.

No sooner had the order gone out than the sniper up and vanished, saving him from the rant Gerrel was still trying to write in his head. It was _hard_ to come up with a long-winded rant about stealing his shot, dammit. So he was left to trudge back to the shuttles with Hazir and give _him_ the complaints, rather than throw them at the sniper. He was pretty sure Hazir wasn’t actually listening, but it felt a little better to complain at _something_.

And then, naturally, he ended up across from the very same sniper on the shuttle.

 _Perfect_.

The sniper was rather determinedly looking anywhere but at him as he undid the clasps of his helmet, rifle put away properly this time. Dimly reminded that it was safe to pull helmets off on the shuttle and it was damn uncomfortable to leave it on for too long, Gerrel lowered his head so he was looking at the floor and started pulling his own off. It always took a good chunk of the ride just to get all the clasps undone, purely from the sheer volume of the things holding his helmet on, his hoses attached, and all the fancy tech working and in place, so he resigned himself to several minutes of staring at a lot of feet.

By the time he managed to get his own off, the sniper’s helmet was perched daintily between his feet. Sensing an opportunity to pick up where he’d left off, Gerrel raised his head, jaws parting-

-and immediately froze, taking in the face behind the mask.

The sniper had tall eye sockets with shallow lower ridges. Paired with how his eyes didn’t appear to be interested in opening more than three-quarters of the way at max and halfway by default, it gave him a downright imperious look. His nose was thin, straight, and lay close to his face, his lips full and set in an admittedly cute pout. His face long and narrow, and framed by jaw-length, straight brown hair that he was currently in the process of taming after its battle with static and his helmet’s weight.

Gerrel’s mouth went dry. Now it was hanging open for an entirely new reason. He’d personally always considered his mother to be the most beautiful quarian to ever live, but this sniper was running a damn close second.

The sniper noticed him then, and immediately seemed to shrink, shoulders hunching and hands tensing in his hair. “Wh- what do you want?” he demanded, tone saying _I’ll fight you_ but stutter saying _Please don’t make me_.

Gerrel couldn’t help it. He just blurted out the first words to come to mind: “You’re gorgeous.”

The sniper’s face turned as red as Gerrel’s felt. _Shit_. “Shit, wait, sorry, I, uh, I meant, uh…” He swallowed and smacked himself in the forehead. _Stupid, stupid, stupid_. “I, uh, I think we got off on the wrong foot?” he offered, somewhat lamely in his own opinion. “Uh, I mean, obviously there’s no way you could’ve known I was aiming, totally unreasonable of me, and, uh…”

He swallowed again, feeling his face grow redder by the second. “Han’Gerrel vas _Neema_ nar _Tonbay_ ,” he muttered finally, shoving his hand out and staring at the floor.

There was a moment’s pause, and Gerrel had time to rethink all of his life decisions that led him to this horribly embarrassing moment. Just when he was about to see if he could jump out the shuttle still, a deceptively spidery hand took his and shook it. “Aerazl’Xala vas _Neema_ nar _Alcata_ ,” the sniper said in a voice like a whispering breeze.

As Gerrel lifted his head to meet Aerazl’s eyes, he heard Hazir mutter beside him, “Oh, here we go…”

**Author's Note:**

> can you believe there are people who listened to gerrel talk about rael in me2 and thought "yes that is the tone of a straight man discussing his straight man best friend whom he definitely does not have a crush on because he's 100% straight"


End file.
